Summer Mysterious contemplates what could happen in the summer. What is its allure and what do we crave most from it? What are the memories, hopes, desires, and anxieties related to the season—our intimate mysteries and personal pleasures? In what ways can this time of year transform and renew our psyches?

In Alexi Worth’s Shoreline (2017) sunbathing figures coalesce and blend into a coastal landscape. Young boys are seen lost and exploring abandoned houses in Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s vintage photographs and a young woman lies nude dreaming of desire in Duane Michals’ sequence The Young Girl’s Dream (1969). We encounter the anxiety and delight of visiting an amusement park in Roger Brown’s Amusement Centre (c. 1970), and of being immersed in a dense green forest in Claire Sherman’s Leaves and Vines (2017). Barbara Takenaga’s abstraction #4 Night Painting with Ceil (2001) invokes a mesmerizing night sky and a vivid assortment of tropical fruits and flowers ahead of a bright blue seascape, engrosses us in the visual and sensual experience of food in Janet Fish’s Patzcuaro (1989).